


Petticoats, Aprons, & Wigs

by ballantine



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, Huddling For Warmth, On the Run, Post-Series, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: The last time Max touched her, she had reached through the bars of one of Governor Rogers’s cells and hauled her in for a kiss. It was bruising and furious, so unlike the type Max prefers to give. Afterwards, she damned Anne and Jack for fools and stole them from cell and city.





	

Boston is very cold. Colder still when they have to keep the carriage shutters open so a nosy constable can stick his nose into their business first thing outside the shipyard.

The man leans through the carriage window so he can get a good look at them. Anne eyes the distance between the sill and his chin and thinks, _if things look like they’re going to shit, I’ll yank him down by the cravat, knock him out._

The man’s eyes shift and linger over Max, who keeps her eyes demurely lowered to her lap.

Anne revises. _If he keeps looking at her like that, I’ll yank him in by the cravat, stick a blade through his eye._ It’d be difficult to retrieve the knife from the many, many folds of this fucking dress, but she’ll just have to slice through it if it comes to that. She almost welcomes the prospect.

“Our papers are all in order, if there’s a problem,” Jack says from the opposite seat. His tone manages to imply he doubts the man is capable of reading them. After a second, his eyes flick over to meet Anne’s. _Steady_.

The man retracts his head and casts Jack a sour look. “Give ‘em here, then.”

He takes long enough staring at the documents that Anne starts to think he’s either bluffing about being lettered or they’re all about to be nabbed. She slowly slips her hand down to where her knife is hidden.

Beside her, Max goes impossibly more still. This is the point where she would usually say something — probably _don’t_. Maybe _do it_. But the rules of society are different here; Max stays silent. This doesn’t do anything to kill Anne’s desire to use the blade.

The wait lengthens. Anne’s grip on the hilt of her knife tightens.

Slowly, with the arm that is mostly hidden behind the bulk of Anne’s ridiculous dress, Max reaches out and places her hand over Anne’s. Soft fingers run lightly over the tight stretch of thin skin between her knuckles.

Her touch is startlingly warm. Anne can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a seduction or a comfort, but fuck it — when has she ever been able to tell the difference with Max?

She has the choice between continuing to hold the knife or turning her hand over to clasp Max’s. It’s not much of a choice.

“Alright,” the man says gruffly, handing the papers back to Jack with a good deal more care than he took grabbing them. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Headley. Ma’am,” he adds, nodding at Anne.

Mission complete, Max retracts her hand. Anne ruthlessly squashes the longing that immediately leaps up in its absence.

This was the first time Max has touched her since Nassau. You think she’d be used to the loneliness by now.

—

The last time Max touched her, she had reached through the bars of one of Governor Rogers’s cells and hauled her in for a kiss. It was bruising and furious, so unlike the type Max prefers to give. Afterwards she damned Anne and Jack for fools and stole them from cell and city.

—

Of the three of them, you wouldn’t guess who loathed their disguise the most.

Jack, of course, is not sparing in his complaints about the wig. That fucking wig. She’ll admit he looks ridiculous in it, but when she catches a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, what leaps in her stomach is not humor but dread.

The wig means power and is worn by men who have never known hunger or shame. In other words, it represents everything Jack hates, which is the only reason she doesn’t kick him in the shins when he complains about how it itches and flattens his hair.

For her own part, Anne hasn’t said anything about her new uniform. She doesn’t see any point in telling the others how much she hates it. There’s no way they don’t already know.

The dress is strange. It makes her both more and less invisible on the street, captures unwanted attention from men and spurns any real measure of respect in the same instant. She has never been like Max, or the Guthrie bitch — able to wear a woman’s proper clothes and feel secure and powerful. It’s not who she is. The heavy fall of the skirt about her ankles feels like a lie.

Just as Anne has more right than Jack to hate her disguise, Max has them both beat. Everything about her attire is intended to mute her — face paintless, hair bound tightly back, and the servant dress dull and conservative, she looks nothing like the proud Nassau queen of commerce. But she hasn’t uttered a single complaint since donning it.

Anne, who saw the withheld misery tighten her eyes in those early quiet days after they’d fled, had objected to the plan immediately.

“This is not forever,” Max told her. “And if you think I don’t have the patience to endure this, then I have to wonder if you ever knew me at all.”

“That’s not what I fucking meant,” Anne said, and left the cabin in search of some rum, before remembering that the crew would look askance at a woman drinking. She ended up settling for getting shitfaced with Jack on the other side of the small cabin, mutinously ignoring Max’s presence — the smell and look of her, the determined silence.

 _Why rescue me at all,_ Anne wanted to ask then. _If you’re going to pretend we were never nothing, why rescue me at all._

—

That first night in Boston, Anne wakes in the middle of the night to a weight dipping her mattress. She doesn’t hesitate.

“I admit I perhaps could have gone about this a better way,” Max says, calm under the press of Anne’s hands. She is spread out over the pillow like the best memory Anne’s ever had, dark hair stark against the pale starched sheets.

She looks up at her with clear eyes; if she is bothered by the knife at her neck, she does not show it.

Well. It doesn’t matter that she’s not bothered. Anne’s bothered. This runs too close to some of her worse dreams, the real fucked up ones that end with Max dead and Anne to blame.

She throws herself off Max and shoves the knife back into its sheath under her pillow, movements agitated in their haste.

Now unencumbered by such inconsequentialities as knives to her throat, Max wastes no time wriggling under the blanket. After a moment, she notices Anne staring. She doesn’t stop cocooning herself in Anne’s covers, but she does take the time to whisper, “Be reasonable, Anne. It’s freezing and I’m hardly going to go cuddling up to Jack.”

 _He hogs the covers anyway_ , Anne would normally say, but she can’t seem to form words.

Hesitantly, she lifts the covers and slides back into the quickly dissipating warmth, careful to keep her limbs close to her sides so they don’t invade Max’s space. All her careful maneuvering goes to hell when the other woman slides in close and presses their bodies together from calf to shoulders.

Anne feels the inviting soft give of Max’s belly and chest against her arm. She swallows, body singing out. The muscles that were still tense from her surprise appearance and the cold night air start to relax.

“You never used to sleep on your back,” Max says thoughtfully, her breath a warm puff on Anne’s bare neck. She’s got her head as low as it will go without being swallowed by the covers.

“Don’t like having my back to the room if I’m sleeping alone,” Anne says, before realizing that she is not, in fact, alone anymore. Unwillingly, she glances down and catches Max’s gaze in the dim lighting of the room.

Max seems to realize the error in the words too, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, miraculously, she starts to tug on Anne’s opposite arm, wordlessly urging her to turn over.

And what the fuck is Anne supposed to do? She turns over. She doesn’t say anything when Max uses the movement to curl an arm around her shoulders.

It doesn’t feel so daring, then, to lower her head and rest it against Max’s chest. The other woman’s only response is to hum a little and press closer. Slowly, the bed gets warm again.

“It’s too cold up here,” Anne says, because she doesn’t want to fall asleep just yet.

“But they won’t be looking for us,” Max says.

She traces a warm line down the length of her spine, and Anne doesn’t bother holding back a shiver. Freely showing her desire is the closest she ever came to seduction, before. Max was always perfectly in control until the moment Anne stopped trying to hide.

“Do you think we can ever go back?” Anne asks after a moment. She doesn’t mean Nassau, exactly.

Max doesn’t say anything for a long time, long enough that Anne suspects she’s fallen asleep — but then she speaks, and her voice is a little choked. “We’re still alive. So long as that’s true, there’s always a chance.”

Anne takes that in. She’s held out for longshot chances before. She thinks she can do it again, if it’s for Max.

She tucks a leg between the other woman’s and resolves to stay awake as long as she can. 


End file.
